1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of telecommunications applications and more particularly to the field of intelligently managing media files from communication recording applications in contact centers and law enforcement.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
An important aspect to be considered in managing any communication center is to take steps to ensure that, in the case of a customer-service communication environment, the quality of interactions with customers is as good as can reasonably be achieved. The measurement of quality, especially when considered as the measurement of quality as perceived by a customer, is a challenge of great difficulty. In order to facilitate both measurement of service quality and to monitor performance of customer service representatives, it has become commonplace for some or all communications (for example, voice calls, text chats, video conferencing, collaborative browsing, shared whiteboards, screen activity, and on other communication mediums) to be recorded in order that they can be reviewed at later more convenient time using various sampling techniques, by professionals referred to as “quality monitors” for quality review, also known in the art as quality management (QM). Virtually all contact centers of any size have a full-time staff of quality monitors.
Similarly, recorded conversations in a law enforcement or anti-terrorist communication environment (for example, public switched telephone network, Internet, cellular network, and the like) are typically used for the detection and/or prevention of criminal activity as well as for conversation re-creation, reference and evidence purposes.
By capturing, storing, managing and retrieving interactions (for example, voice calls, text chats, video conferencing, collaborative browsing, shared whiteboards, screen activity, etc.), recording communications enable organizations to comply with regulations, follow internal policies, mitigate risk of litigation, use as evidence, monitor quality of service, prevent or detect criminal activity, and leverage recorded communications to gain business insight. Whether these organizations capture every interaction or record a random sample for various purposes, the number of files generated and the size of these files continuously grow as more communications are recorded. As such, the storage space needed to house these files grows as well. Storage requirements are further increased by recordings that include screen captures, video conferencing, and other multi-media interactions coupled with the quality level of these recordings. Finally, some organizations are required to keep recording for long periods of time for compliance, customer service, evidence and/or other requirements; so re-using storage space becomes problematic if not infeasible. This often results in an exponential growth in storage requirements for communication centers. Intrinsically, many communication centers are left with either deleting files and/or regularly purchasing additional storage space which could have an impact on customer service when files that are needed are no longer available, or increased expenses to add storage space. To compound the issues, with an increasing number of files that are generated as more and more communications are recorded, the current art does not provide best practices or systems for capturing, cataloging, managing, and retrieving communication recordings efficiently. Many contact center centers backup communication recordings to DVD or tape backup after the recordings reach a certain age (for example, recordings of one year or older). DVD and tape backup storage systems are often not cataloged in the same manner as the primary storage for recording systems known in the art which renders the retrieval and use of these recordings highly inefficient if not infeasible, especially in a customer service communication center environment.
What is needed in the art is a method to efficiently catalog, archive, effectively manage and easily retrieve recorded communications for quality and analytical review to comply with regulations, follow internal policies, mitigate risk of litigation, use as evidence, monitor quality of service, prevent or detect criminal activity, leverage recorded calls to gain business insight, and the like, while reducing the need for additional storage requirements.